Time To Die
by Mir Queen
Summary: Oliver always felt a warning when the people he loved were about to die. He just never made it there in time. Only time to die. For once in his broken life, Oliver hopes for a miracle.


Disclaimer:_ I do not own nor make any profit off of Arrow. It belongs to The CW, DC Comics, etc._**  
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A/N: I have been thinking of Felicity being Slade's last kill for a while now, and listening to the Arrow soundtrack got me crying over this scenario. I'm so far behind on posting it's not even funny, but I had to write this. Not entirely sure if Sodium Pentothal is supposed to work how I used it here (I know it didn't seem that way when Ivo 'used' it on Oliver), but oh well. There will be at least one more chapter to this, but I'm not sure beyond that.

A few might recognize this story from my Arrow tumblr blog: _HoodSmoaked_.

**Chapter 1: Chains**

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The warning came too late.

It always came too late.

Like Yao Fei, shot just as Oliver's senses tingled with warning. Like Shado, shot just at the moment Oliver realized he needed to move again, needed to protect someone else like he'd protected Sara. Like the realization he needed to get to CNRI, but he came too late to save Tommy. Like his mother, when all of his senses flared in warning just as the car crashed and he was knocked unconscious.

Now, in this moment, was one warning he needed to fall through. One warning he needed to fall flat and useless. This last person he loved, whoever they were, had to survive. If not… neither would Oliver. Not with one more grievous loss hanging over his life. He ran as he had never run before, praying as he had not done in years.

His prayers fell on deaf ears.

Slade waited for him in absolute stillness. The satisfaction and unsettling calm in his entire stance defied all of the wild, unsteady fear and desperation in Oliver's as he slid to a halt twenty feet away from his enemy and the one last life Slade had promised would die.

When he realized precisely who he was fighting for, Oliver's horror paralyzed him at the worst possible moment.

He never saw the chains coming.

And come they did, slamming into his already beaten and weakened body and wrapping around him a vice of pain and breathlessness. Around and around the chains moved, pulled tighter every rotation until Oliver's arm had been plastered to his sides, pressing in on his battered ribs. Two of Slade's mirakuru-ridden soldiers yanked the ends of the chains, dragging Oliver to the concrete support pillar ten feet across from Slade and his captive.

She hung in something of a stupor, seeming to attempt fighting, but never reaching far enough within herself to accomplish it. With her eyes glazed and mouth not quite able to form logical words, Oliver found fear welling up deeper than before.

Her curling hair fell in the worst disarray he had ever seen it, her makeup creating a wash of macabre pain across her face, dark bruises scattered her arms and legs, and her smashed glasses lay useless against her nose.

Felicity.

How could he have been so stupid and arrogant? He knew Slade had set up Count Vertigo, knew that Felicity's rescue at Queen Consolidated became front page news, that the obvious return to killing set her apart from any other person he had saved since returning as the Arrow. She, alone, had inspired his rage to boil over and his arrows – not one, but three damning proofs of his care for her – to aim for the kill.

"What have you done to her?" Oliver hardly dared ask the question, terror spiking in every cell as his voice quavered fearfully. Even in her hazy condition, Felicity could sense his fear, his anger, and the dire situation she was in. A tear made its way down her face that belied the half-lucid nature of whatever condition she endured.

"Nothing yet," the once-soldier scoffed in hard amusement. "The only reason I waited so long to show you my Ace was so the serum could work into her system to my satisfaction."

"What!" Oliver shouted furiously, disbelievingly, almost unable to accept he'd heard the words. "You injected her?!"

"Not with the mirakuru, you fool!" Slade laughed sneeringly, patting Felicity's battered arm like a favored pet. "As if I wanted her strong enough to fight back? No, no… I gave her sodium pentothal."

As horrible as it felt to know Felicity had been drugged like this, that she had been at the mercy of Slade for any length of time, Oliver couldn't grasp the point of it. Truth serum didn't make any sense in the grand scheme of things. It couldn't hurt her, could it? Oliver already knew some of her darkest moments and memories, even as far back as her father's abandonment. Slade knew anything Felicity could reveal about Oliver or the Queen family… Despite the lack of sense, Oliver dreaded whatever purpose stood behind this.

"Why don't we ask her who is under that hood?" Slade finally asked, his hand wrapped painfully tightly around the blonde's already-painful upper arm, the site of injection a raw circle of red blood and rapidly purpling bruises.

Before he even asked her, Felicity fought manically against the daze of the serum to hold onto her deepest protective instinct against this truth, against exposing the Arrow's identity. A choice that – at any other time – would have hurt not only Oliver, but Quentin, Laurel, Roy, Sara, John, and Felicity herself. Oliver knew better. He knew she had no choice, she would never willingly betray their secret; he knew her revelation would go against all her instincts and loyalty, against everything Felicity was deep inside herself. But she wouldn't see it that way. To her, it was the deepest kind of betrayal she could perform. And suddenly Oliver understood the point of using sodium pentothal.

"Don't!" Oliver growled desperately, raging against the impossible chains which prevented him rushing across the ten feet of distance between them; between Oliver and the one woman he never imagined would mean as much as she did in his life. He never saw her coming – this awkward, brilliant, enigmatic young woman with so much heart and soul it blinded him every time he looked at her. Beyond the geeky knowledge, the rambling way of speaking, and the inappropriate comments, Felicity walked with light and hope running through her veins.

Slade's entire mission was to bring despair into Oliver's life through any possible means; through a destroyed city, a lost cause, death, pain, broken family, ruined relationships, corrupted hearts…

Everything led back to Oliver's connections. To the people he protected, the people he worked with, the people he loved… the people _he could really care about_. Everything and everyone in his life had been corrupted by Slade, from injury to death to broken hearts to broken spirits. Now, Slade wanted to corrupt Felicity and somehow twist her against the connection she and Oliver had always shared. But this woman – _this_ _woman_ everyone underestimated and overlooked until her determination and faith and heart upended their arrogance more than any arrow ever could – this woman possessed strength and purity surpassing anything or anyone Oliver had ever known.

Oliver knew, deep in his bones and the very sinew of his spirit, this was precisely why Slade had saved Felicity for last. Not merely because Oliver loved her so much – and he could finally admit to himself that he truly did – but because she was the brightest light in his life. Even when Felicity was angry with him, she never abandoned him to whatever selfish folly he had become embroiled in. She was the one person who would never give up on him for even a moment's hesitation, no matter how low he sunk or how selfish he was. Felicity would never stop believing in the hero he had tried to be, and Oliver would never stop believing in the hero she had always been.

The only way Slade could corrupt Felicity was to use the very essence of who she was and turn it against her. To make her betray the faith she felt and the hope she inspired. She would never do it of her own free will, but Felicity felt so strongly about her own principles that even being _forced_ to tell such a monumental secret, and unwillingly betray those she loved, would kill her.

The grip of Slade's hand increased the more Felicity struggled, tears streaming down her tight, pained features that sent Oliver's heart stuttering with the weight of failure.

He had failed her. More than anyone else in his life, it was Felicity he had failed the most when he withheld the cure from Slade five years earlier.

"Please," Oliver pleaded, voice strangled with his own inadequacy as he revealed the only halting words he could find it within himself to speak, "Stop this."

"You'll never learn, will you, kid?" Slade asked him mockingly. "You'll beg like a dog when you know it's futile. I suppose you must have done at least that when Ivo gave you the choice. Bravo."

The sting of hate and disgust filled Oliver's ears where he stood, his bow and arrow lying uselessly at Slade's feet and the chains holding Oliver back from his greatest desire. There had to be something he could do to free Felicity, yet even if he could spare her life in the end, she would never be the same.

Despair slipped into Oliver's soul like a wraith and he knew Slade had already won. Whatever happened after that point, the ultimate purpose of Slade's promise had been fulfilled.

"Who is the Arrow?" Slade asked slowly, with quiet, manic anticipation.

Felicity fought; she tried to clamp her lips shut around the name her mind pushed forward, pain spiking visibly in her face, and Oliver couldn't take it anymore.

"It's okay, Felicity," he whispered in horrified resignation. His eyes spoke understanding, kindness, care for her… he let her know in his gaze that he could never hate her. It would never be enough, but it was all he could give. "It's okay. Tell him. Don't fight it anymore. It's going to be okay. I promise."

Slade laughed at his gentle soothing, reveling in this new form of entertainment. "Yes, Felicity. He _promises_ you. Oliver makes a lot of promises. But come… tell me. _Who is the Arrow?_"

A sob shuddered Felicity's small body as the sodium pentothal coursed through, combined with this encouragement, forcing the words from her reluctant throat.

"Oli–ver… Q–Queen," she whispered in painful surrender, another sob heckling the surname she tried so desperately to withhold.

"Oh, well done. That's all I needed to hear." Slade laughed again and shook Felicity as if she had made him proud.

Oliver felt sick to his stomach.

"But now," Slade continued, and if Oliver had earlier believed his voice quietly manic, it now surpassed that tenfold. "I need to know one more thing. Something far more… _sensitive_."

Tension lined both Oliver and Felicity's bodies anew, muscles tightening against the frightening eagerness in their captor's voice. Oliver could not imagine what could hurt them any more than Slade already had, but he dared not think on it long. There was no telling what more Slade had dug up to use in these final moments.

"I have wondered at times what you thought of Oliver, but I never really gave it a lot of thought before."

Felicity's eyes grew frantically wide, muscles cording in her slender neck as she fought this second theme more viscerally than she had fought the first. She clutched her throat as though someone had wrapped their hand about it; as if that simple action could hold back the words Slade would soon require of her.

Oliver could not quite understand where this second line of thought would go; Felicity's reaction even surprised him a little.

"Tell me, Felicity," Slade began curiously, perverse joy lining his face as he drew out the seconds in agonizing slowness before finally completing his thought, "…How much does Oliver Queen mean to you?"

On some level, Oliver always knew Felicity's gaze held more than simple friendship after he'd done something she considered heroic. He knew her innuendo became stronger around him than around anyone else. He knew the way she stared when his shirt came off, and not just because of his scars. He knew her pain after Russia, when he declared he could not be with anyone he really cared about.

He saw the love in her eyes when she told him he deserved better, when she wanted a promise he'd come back from the fight with Brother Cyrus, when she pulled his mask over his eyes and declared him a hero. There was love in Felicity's eyes when she told him her deep fear of losing him, and when she told him the truth about Thea and Malcolm in spite of her fear. There was love when she cuddled up to his hand after being shot by Tockman, and when she pleaded with him not to surrender to Slade, her hand delicate hand slipping out of his fingers as he walked away. Worst of all, there was love in her eyes and her very presence when she tried to keep his secret from a man who already knew it.

"For God's sake, stop!" Oliver half-shouted across to Slade, no longer caring if he pleaded. No, he wasn't even pleading. He was begging. Begging like a dog, just as Slade said, but he didn't even care. For Felicity, he would do that much and more. "Don't _do_ this to her!"

"How much does he mean to you?" Slade went on loudly, yanking the blond ponytail as far back as his captive's neck would allow.

Felicity began to gasp in earnest now, the sound of her valiant battle piercing Oliver's heart, but she could not fight the serum in her system.

"He means everything to me!" Felicity cried out in an agony of revelation, and as much as it tore her apart to admit what she had hidden away, Oliver could almost feel her relief to finally say the words that tumbled from her lips. "He makes me feel safe. He's my best friend. I love him!"

The last three words broke something in the beautiful blonde who had stood by Oliver's side so long and through so much. Her eyes welled up and the tears slipped down her cheeks, marring her damaged expression even further.

"Thank you," Slade mocked with false gratitude, taking Felicity's hair and roughly shoving her forward onto the ground between them. As she hit the ground, weakened hands and knees unable to stop her face from slamming onto hard concrete, the tears which had been silent became quiet sobs. From the barest glance at her lowered face, Oliver could actually see the serum's effects fading away already, like a drug high passing over.

"You waited for just the right moment, didn't you?" he growled accusingly, furiously, at his once-friend. "Let the serum linger until it nearly wore off, just so she would have to live with the aftermath immediately after you forced her hand!"

"How clever you are, figuring that out so quickly," Slade mocked further, smirking at the outrage on Oliver's battered face. "But that doesn't matter now. She's been broken, corrupted. And I have seen true despair in your eyes. Now, I can complete my promise to you."

"No! No, don't! I'll do anything! _Anything_!" Oliver shouted hoarsely, no amount of speculation necessary to know what came next. He couldn't bring himself to care that he was sobbing the words by the end of it. "_Please_! Slade, _listen to me_!"

The monster was far beyond listening, taking steps towards the bow and arrow he had kicked from Oliver's grasp. Of all the weapons, and all the deaths, Slade chose the one that would kill Oliver the most.

Black bow in hand, and green arrow knocked, Deathstroke turned to aim.

"Time to die, Felicity."

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A/N: To be continued..._  
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